The Human Blowtorch
Introduction: The World is Flammable
We live in a world that is convinced it has a therapeutic problem. Men have anger management issues. They have unresolved trauma. They have chemical imbalances. And so we send them off to workshops and seminars to learn breathing techniques and to get in touch with their feelings. We tell them to count to ten. But the book of Proverbs does not diagnose the problem this way. The problem is not therapeutic; it is moral. The problem is not a disorder; it is sin. An angry man is not a victim of his unfortunate temperament; he is a sinner in active rebellion against the God who commands meekness.
The modern world wants to treat the angry man as a passive victim. He is simply put upon by a host of irritating forces. The driver in front of him is too slow. The coffee is too cold. The government is corrupt. His wife doesn't understand him. And because the world is an imperfect place, there is always plenty of kindling lying around for him to ignite. But the Bible tells us that the problem is not the kindling; the problem is the man who carries a blowtorch in his soul. He is not a passive observer of strife; he is an active agent of it. He is a carrier. He is a fire-starter.
This proverb is a diagnostic tool. It shows us the direct causal link between a man's internal character and the external chaos he creates. Strife does not just happen. Transgression does not just appear out of thin air. They are manufactured goods, and the angry man is the factory. He is a strife-generator, a transgression-machine. And until he repents of his anger, he will continue to churn out relational wreckage and sin, no matter how many breathing exercises he does.
The Text
An angry man stirs up strife,
And a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression.
(Proverbs 29:22 LSB)
The Strife-Stirrer (v. 22a)
The first clause gives us a simple, observable law of the universe.
"An angry man stirs up strife," (Proverbs 29:22a)
Notice the active verb: "stirs up." The angry man is a pot-stirrer. He is an agitator. Strife, dissension, and quarrels are his native element. He thrives in conflict because his anger demands an object. If there is no fire, he will bring his own lighter fluid and matches. He sees peace not as a blessing to be cultivated but as a boring state of affairs that needs to be enlivened with some drama. He is the man who takes a minor disagreement and, through sarcasm, insults, and a refusal to listen, escalates it into a full-blown family crisis.
This is because anger is fundamentally rooted in pride. The angry man believes he has been personally affronted. His rights have been violated, his dignity has been insulted, his kingdom has been threatened. He is the center of his own universe, and when the world does not arrange itself to his liking, he lashes out. He cannot bear to be wronged, overlooked, or inconvenienced. Therefore, he is constantly on the lookout for offenses, and when you are looking for them, you will always find them. He interprets every ambiguous comment in the worst possible light. He assumes the worst motives in others. He is a strife magnet because his pride is a raw, exposed nerve.
James tells us where these wars and fights come from. They come from the desires that war in our members (James 4:1). The angry man is at war with himself, and so he inevitably goes to war with everyone around him. He cannot produce peace in his home, his church, or his workplace because he has no peace in his own soul. The strife he stirs up is simply the external manifestation of the internal turmoil. He is a walking civil war, and he is determined to make everyone else a casualty.
The Transgression Multiplier (v. 22b)
The second clause broadens the scope of the damage. It is not just about arguments; it is about sin, and lots of it.
"And a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression." (Proverbs 29:22b LSB)
The "hot-tempered man" is a parallel description of the "angry man." This is a man with a short fuse. He is easily provoked. And the result is that he "abounds in transgression." His anger is a gateway sin. It is a sin that rarely travels alone; it brings a whole gang of other sins with it. When a man is in the grip of his temper, what else does he do? He lies. He slanders. He curses. He makes rash vows. He is cruel. He punches holes in the sheetrock. He drives recklessly. He says things to his wife and children that leave deep, festering wounds for years. Anger opens the door, and a legion of other sins rushes in to party.
This is why the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20). Man's anger is self-centered, and it always leads to more sin, not less. It creates a bigger mess than the one it was supposedly responding to. Even Moses, the meekest man on earth, in a moment of anger at Meribah, struck the rock instead of speaking to it, and in this transgression, he was barred from the Promised Land (Numbers 20:10-12). If a man like Moses could abound in transgression because of one hot-tempered moment, what about us?
We must be clear. There is such a thing as righteous anger. Jesus was angry when He saw the hardness of the Pharisees' hearts (Mark 3:5). He was filled with zeal when He cleansed the Temple (John 2:17). But notice the difference. When Jesus got angry, a man with a withered hand was healed. When we get angry, the result is a distraught family and broken relationships. Righteous anger is slow, controlled, directed at sin, and aims at restoration. The hot-tempered man's anger is quick, out of control, directed at people, and aims at vindication.
The Gospel for Hot-Heads
What then is the solution? It is not found in a seminar. The solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The solution to our anger is God's anger. On the cross, the full and righteous wrath of God against sin, including the sin of our petty, self-serving anger, was poured out upon His Son. Jesus absorbed the fury we deserved so that we could be clothed in the peace we did not earn.
The cross crucifies our pride, which is the fuel of our anger. It tells us that we are sinners so great that only the death of God's Son could save us. How can a man who understands this maintain his inflated sense of personal rights? How can he continue to rage when his own convenience is disturbed, knowing that his sin disturbed the peace of heaven and cost God everything?
Furthermore, the Spirit of God, given to us through Christ, produces the opposite of what our flesh produces. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). The hot-tempered man does not need to manage his anger; he needs to kill it. He needs to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit (Romans 8:13). This is not a passive process. It is warfare. It means confessing anger as the wicked sin that it is. It means calling it what God calls it. It means turning from it and cultivating the opposite virtues by the grace of God.
He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city (Proverbs 16:32). This is the man God honors. This is the man who reflects the character of God Himself, who is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Psalm 103:8). The angry man is a strife-stirrer and a sin-multiplier. But the man who has been humbled by the cross and filled with the Spirit becomes a peacemaker, a restorer of the breach, and a testament to the power of God to turn a human blowtorch into a son of peace.